The present disclosure relates to a driving assistance system.
Recently, an increasing number of vehicles are equipped with various driving assistance capabilities, examples of which include automatic lane keeping control, automatic braking control, and adaptive auto-cruise control that have already been installed in a lot of vehicles on the market. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H06-255519 discloses a driving assistance technique for relaxing the driver's attention to the surrounding environment in order to relieve his or her tension. Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H07-069233 discloses a driving assistance technique for alleviating the driver's muscle tone during driving with the intervention of a control program.
Generally speaking, the driver should not do distracted driving (e.g., looking aside or talking over the cellphone while driving his or her vehicle) because it is unbeneficial from the safety considerations. Thus, it is possible to draw such a distracted driver's attention with an alert. However, even if he or she is alerted to the fact, he or she may still continue such distracted driving or may soon resume doing it after having suspended it just temporarily. For this reason, there is an increasing demand for some effective measure for discouraging such distracted driving.